“Scientists offer new insight into what to protect of the world’s rapidly vanishing languages, cultures, and species.”

this continues-of note:
“Resilience theory, and the nascent field of resilience science associated with it, begins with the basic premise that human and natural systems act as strongly coupled, integrated systems. These so-called “social-ecological” systems are understood to be in constant flux and highly unpredictable. And unlike standard ecological theory, which holds that nature responds to gradual changes in a correspondingly steady fashion, resilience thinking holds that systems often respond to stochastic events — things like storms or fires — with dramatic shifts into completely different states from which it is difficult, if not impossible, to recover.”